More than 300 people gathered at Franklin Mountains State Park on Wednesday to watch the homecoming of the desert bighorn sheep to El Paso. About 80 sheep leaped out of their trailers and bounded up the rocky slope in the warm light of golden hour.
Some ran solo, some in groups, their white patched behinds becoming specks in the distance. One ram paused on the slope, turning to gaze at the crowd below, much to his audience’s excitement.
Two women learned of the sheep release on Instagram and drove nine hours from Fort Worth to watch. Spontaneous road trips are one of the perks of retirement, said Jenifer Ajlvey. Patrick Talamantes, another spectator, did a small hike with his 3-year-old son before the main show.
“We gotta see this,” Talamantes said in the parking lot before the sheep arrived. “It’s a one-time thing. He likes being outside, we like being outside. We can’t miss this.”
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Desert bighorn sheep return to native Franklin Mountains in El Paso
Why El Paso is key to the survival of desert bighorn sheep in Texas.
It’s a momentous occasion for the native bighorns, who once roamed these mountains years ago before human activities wiped them out of their historical range in West Texas. Their return to the Franklin Mountains marks the next chapter in the species’s survival. A digital sign on Woodrow Bean Transmountain Drive warns drivers to slow down for wildlife.
More than 80% of the ewes released were pregnant, said Froylán Hernández, desert bighorn sheep program leader at Texas Parks and Wildlife. He expects most of them to give birth to their lambs in the spring.
Texas Parks and Wildlife captured and transported the sheep by helicopter Tuesday from Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area, where the source herd lives. But aoudads, a hardy sheep imported from northern Africa, have managed to infiltrate the area in recent years, carrying disease that is fatal to the bighorns.
The Franklin Mountains are the only mountain range in the Trans-Pecos region that doesn’t contain aoudads. In three to five years, it could be home to a new source herd, Hernández said.
“I’m hoping from past experience with translocations, we’ll have enough animals here to not only make lambs, but produce a surplus so we can continue restoration in Texas,” Hernández said.
Check out these photos from Wednesday’s sheep release:
The post PHOTOS: ‘We gotta see this,’ spectators say as desert bighorn sheep move into Franklin Mountains appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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